'Woe, Canada': Missy Franklin instead a U.S. Olympic star

American swim star with Canadian roots goes two-for-three so far in London, with four more events to go

She may have a Canadian mother and father but Missy Franklin lived up to her billing as the next big thing in American swimming Monday when she won the 100-metre backstroke gold medal at the London Olympics.

Photograph by: Al Bello/Getty Images
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LONDON — To the “Could Have Been Ours” list of Olympians that includes ice dancer Tanith Belbin, moguls skier Dale Begg-Smith, hockey’s Brett Hull, and probably a few we’ve forgotten, we can now add the name of Missy Franklin.

The bubbly 17-year-old, born of Canadian parents in Pasadena, Calif., carrying dual citizenship, has already proven conclusively in the first four days of the London Olympics that Canadian bloodlines do not preclude swimming fast.

She just opted not to do it for Canada — the same choice, different sport, made by Hull, who won 2002 Olympic silver (and a World Cup) for Team USA, and Belbin (silver with her American partner Ben Agosto at Turin in 2006), and Begg-Smith, who competed for Australia, winning gold in Turin and silver in Vancouver.

The 6-foot-1 Franklin didn’t quite add to her Olympic debut collection of medals Tuesday night — she finished 1/100th of a second out of the medals in the 200-metre freestyle.

“It’s huge when you’re in Lane 8,” Franklin said, having just squeaked into the final as the No 8 qualifier. “I’m definitely not used to being on the outside like that, so it was kind of hard.”

But she swims seven events here, has already won a bronze in the 4x100 freestyle relay and gold in the 100-metre backstroke, and though no one knows how many medals she’s going to win here, “a lot” might be a good guess.

“It was difficult to bring my emotions down after [winning gold],” she said. “It was a dream come true for me, but now I have four more days ahead of me. It’s really hard to stay sober and focus on [all the races.] But hopefully I can keep doing that.”

Could have been ours? We’ve never had one like her.

Would she have made it to the pinnacle if she had chosen to swim for Canada, when her mom, D.A. — a physician born in Halifax, now operating a private practice in Denver — suggested it, around the time it became apparent the 12-year-old Missy had a competitive future?

You’d love to think so, but there has to be a reason these phenoms always come out of U.S. training centres — even small ones like the Todd Schmitz-coached Colorado program where Franklin swims, which has only a 25-metre pool — but seem forever stalled on a lower rung in Canada.

Swimming Canada’s CEO and national coach Pierre Lafontaine admits he hates losing swim prospects to U.S. schools, let alone to the U.S. Olympic team, but he can hardly be blamed for Franklin’s decision.

She wasn’t even on Canada’s radar screen, growing up in California and then Colorado, though with a little luck she could have been. Her father, Dick, was an all-Canadian offensive lineman at St. Mary’s University who played briefly for the Toronto Argonauts before suffering a knee injury.

Her aunt, Cathy Campbell, is the team doctor for the Canadian women’s soccer team at these Olympics. Missy’s family has relatives in B.C., Ontario and Nova Scotia, and she lists Pictou, N.S. as her “favourite place in the entire world.” She swam her first international meet in Vancouver when she was 13.

Swimming Canada has been a little more vigilant the last few years in seeking out expatriate Canadians living in the U.S., and even have one on this year’s Olympic team, 6-foot-6 freestyler Blake Worsley, who grew up in Steamboat Springs, Colo.

So far, those “future considerations” haven’t panned out quite as well as Franklin has for the Americans, though.

Worsley, 24, won his heat but failed to make the semifinals of the 200-metre freestyle, and swam on the Canadian 4x200m free relay team that finished 14th out of 16 teams.

Meanwhile, the strapping Franklin, with her size-13 flippers, not yet a high school senior, continues to plot her way through an Olympic test so strenuous it could stress out a veteran, let alone a first-timer.

“I have told her if she needs anything to come to me. I said she could ask me, text me, ask any questions. She hasn’t,” said U.S. legend Michael Phelps, to whom Franklin is already being compared (with dubious judgment, and indecent haste.) “I don’t understand how these girls have so much energy. It is non-stop. If Missy can control her emotional energy, that is going to be a very tough part of it. It does add up. I noticed in Beijing, I got super-tired and super-rundown.”

She looked a little rundown in the last 100 metres Tuesday night, so at least we know she’s made of flesh and blood.

Phelps was astounded by Franklin’s 13-minute turnaround Monday night, when she got special permission to do her warmdown swim in the diving tank adjacent to the racing pool, after the 200-metre freestyle semifinal, then simply climbed out of the tank after an abbreviated cooling-off — not enough time to fully dissipate the lactic acid built up from the previous race — and went to the ready room for the 100m backstroke.

When she won, Phelps, who won eight gold medals in the Beijing Olympics, high-fived her and said he had never attempted to swim two races so close together, never mind won the second one.

“This is exceeding expectations more than a hundred billion times,” she gushed after that first gold-medal swim.

So much talent, so much personality, so much marketability.

But Franklin so far has not succumbed to the endorsement/marketing game, hasn’t accepted any prize money, carries a 4.0 grade-point average into her senior year of high school and is determined to keep her amateur status so that she can swim for an NCAA college program, which she plans to choose with the help of, among others, Michael Phelps.

It’s just a hunch, but there might be a lineup of suitors.

Tuesday she was, understandably, a little less exuberant. While her U.S. teammate, Allison Schmitt, won the gold in an Olympic record time of 1:53.61, Franklin set a ferocious early pace, and was first at the 50-metre mark, second after 100, but couldn’t hold off Australia’s Bronte Barratt for third.

Italy’s Federica Pellegrini, the defending Olympic champion and world record holder, finished fifth.

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She may have a Canadian mother and father but Missy Franklin lived up to her billing as the next big thing in American swimming Monday when she won the 100-metre backstroke gold medal at the London Olympics.

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